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description. Now let's dive into today's
message. We are looking today.
At I am the gate, the sayings of Jesus that I am sayings from
John's gospel, I've got I am the gates and I wanted to start by
looking at something that doesn't really appear in this
text but will get us in there, which is TikTok and the the
events of last week where it was predicted.
According to my daughter, that's the second coming of Jesus was
about to happen and local is Laca.
It was a South African pastor who made this prediction that at
the end of September Christ is returning and the apocalypse it
seems did not take place as promised.
Nevertheless, online, certainly on in this sort of TikTok
environment, this snowball started to gather a whole lot of
of pace and it stuck things to it like the Charlie Kirk
assassination got in there. All kinds of bad news got stuck
in there. And and of course memes and
jokes and all the rest about the apocalypse that was about to
take place. Now, it's quite easy to look at
the bad news in the news and to, and to get a little bit
apocalyptic about things and to think, well, why doesn't God
intervene to remove the wicked or to do something about the
world's problems? And and that's gets us much
closer to, to at least the end of what we're going to conclude
from I am the gate. But you know, this problem of,
of, of wanting God to do away with the wicked, It won't
surprise you that this isn't new.
In fact, before the time of Jesus, there was a Jewish myth
that they call the Watchers myth, and it's associated with
an intertestamental book called the Book of Enoch.
And in this story, what has happened is they've reimagined
the story of Noah and the flood. So in Noah and the flood, as you
know, people's hearts are wicked at the start.
God judges the world. People's hearts are wicked at
the end. And so God comes up with another
plan. In this myth, they've imagined a
scenario in which God sends his avenging angels.
The avenging angels pick out all the wicked and do away with
them, leaving only the righteous behind.
And peace is the result. The problem is solved.
And, and wouldn't that just be how we would like to imagine
things? If God would just intervene to,
to to destroy the wicked, If God just erased evil doers and the
selfish bad leaders, our problems would disappear.
Well, I think what our text will at least do if not talk about
God destroying the wicked. You didn't remember reading that
in the Eye on the Gate section if you've read it before.
What our text does give us is a lot to say about good and bad
leaders. And it has some very important
things to suggest about the solution to bad leaders and what
it means for us to be good sheep.
So let me read for us John chapter 10.
You can turn there if you want to follow along.
I think I've got a slide. Very small text for you to
follow, but John 10 verses 1 to 10 reads like this very truly.
I tell you Pharisees, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by
the gate but climbs in by some other way is a thief and a
robber. The one who enters by the gate
is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens for him,
and the sheep listen to his voice.
He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When he has brought out all his own, He goes on ahead of them,
and his sheep follow him because they know His voice.
But they will never follow a stranger.
In fact, they will run away from him because they do not
recognize a stranger's voice. Jesus used this figure of
speech, but the Pharisees did not understand what he was
telling them. Therefore Jesus said again, Very
truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.
All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the
sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate.
Whoever enters through me will be saved.
They will come in and go out and find pasture.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.
I'm going to pray one more time as we think more about this
text. Just bow with me for a moment.
Our gracious Father, we thank you that you are our Good
Shepherd, that you've shown us the way, and then through your
word, you've given us access to your will for us and directions
as to how to follow in your path.
So help us to be good sheep, good followers in your
footsteps. Open our hearts and minds and
our ears to hear today what you would say to us, and we pray
your blessing on our time together in Christ's name.
Amen. Well, as you might be able to
figure out from a series called the I AM Statements of Jesus, or
the fact that Jesus in John's Gospel keeps using the phrase I
am this or that, John's Gospel is discussing the identity of
Jesus. And I think by doing that, what
John is asking us to do is to ask the same questions.
Well, as it even says in Mark's Gospel, who do you say Jesus is?
I think what this text is trying to get us to do is to wrestle
with who Jesus is and who we are in relationship to Jesus.
So the the way that I thought maybe we should approach this I
am the gate section is to look at 4 portraits of Jesus.
And the first portrait is the romantic shepherd with me, his
precious sheep. Now, this, as you can see, is a
very popular topic for painters, for photographers, for people
perhaps with access to AI. And I think while my my first
instinct to look at these sorts of things is to, is to be a
little bit mocking and to poke fun at the sweetness of it all.
But I think it is trying to capture something beautiful
about who Jesus is. And I think I'm here for it.
And I think maybe Jesus likes these paintings.
I don't know. They're, they're awfully sweet
and awfully Caucasian. And it's very easy for us to
read a kind of artistic sweetness into the text as well,
if we have this sort of image of Christ as our shepherd.
And because we're generally, if you've been trained in Western
thinking in any way by watching American movies and so on,
generally we're individualists. So when we read a text like John
chapter 10 where Jesus is talking about his beloved sheep,
well, we do tend to focus on the phrases like Jesus is my
shepherd, Jesus talks to me, Jesus takes care of me and
protects me. But there are two very important
things about this romantic shepherd, romanticized shepherd
perspective that we will miss if we read these texts too much as
individuals. It's two things we'll miss that
I think are important. And the first one is this.
The first is that this text isn't about Jesus as my shepherd
and me as his sheep. If you're an ancient Israelite,
you're not hearing the shepherd cuddling beloved, beloved lamb
when you read this text. This is all about Israel's
leadership. Whenever an ancient Israelite
heard the idea of a shepherd of the Good Shepherd, what they're
thinking is metaphors for Israel's good and bad leaders.
And a text like Ezekiel 34, which I'll read to you now, is
the kind of text they would have been thinking of when Jesus said
these words to them. Here's what Ezekiel 34 says, and
a little bit of a spoiler alert. It does suggest that things are
going to be a little bit dark in this text.
Therefore you shepherds, hear the word of the Lord as surely
as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, because my flock
lacks a shepherd and has so been plundered and has become food
for all the wild animals, and because my shepherds did not
search for my flock, but cared for themselves rather than for
my flock. Therefore you shepherds, hear
the word of the Lord. This is what the sovereign Lord
says. I am against the shepherds and
will hold them accountable for my flock.
I will remove them from tending the flock so that the shepherds
can no longer feed themselves. I will rescue my flock from
their mouths and it will no longer be food for them, for
this is what the Sovereign Lord says.
I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.
As a shepherd looks after his scattered flock when he is with
them, so will I look after my sheep.
I will rescue them from all the places where they were scattered
on a day of clouds and darkness. I will bring them out from the
nations and gather them from the countries, and I will bring them
into their own land. And so it goes on.
So when you look at a text like Ezekiel 34, well, what is it
saying about Israel's leaders? They just leave the sheep to be
scattered, to be attacked by wild animals.
In fact, they're predators too. Much like the wolves.
The sheep need to be rescued from the mouths of their own
leaders. Think we can relate to to some
of that around the world. And so when Jesus comes
announcing himself as the true shepherd, well, in this text,
it's God himself who does the search.
It's God who is rescuing his sheep and bringing them back
from exile. It's God who is caring for his
own people. So in John chapter 10, when when
Jesus says that he is the shepherd, he's announcing
himself as God's special chosen leader of his people, bringing
them back from exile. So we want to avoid a little bit
the the Jesus cuddling the lamb image and to think about who
Israel are as God's people and what his pattern of leadership
means for them. The second thing that we miss, I
think, and I want to deal with this very quickly, but I, I
think given the kind of person I am and the kind of community
common ground is, sometimes it needs to be said and you're not
going to like this. And I'm sorry, but we focus way
too much on the line. The sheep listen to my voice and
I heard it towards recently that that if we quieten down, if we
train ourselves to listen and if we, if we, you know, hear our
hearts, we can train ourselves to hear the voice of Jesus
speaking audibly to us. Jesus wants to speak and we just
have to learn how to listen. Now, I think some people, you
know, God can speak, does speak. Some people perhaps hear the
voice of God. I don't, and I've never met
anyone who does. And even though I grew up in
this, in this kind of background, so I don't come from
a cessationist group, but this text isn't talking about how God
reveals himself to us. So God may speak, but it's
certainly not this text that is telling us that he does.
Even if you think about the metaphor, when the sheep are
listening to the shepherd's voice, they don't understand the
shepherd's language. They recognize his voice.
They know how to stick with Him, and that's what matters.
So if you're the kind of person who does hear God's voice,
amazing. If you're not that kind of
person, don't feel discouraged. That's really all I want to say.
Say to you, it's the normal experience of Christians in
history that they do not hear God audibly.
We are all shepherded by God, but not spoken to, I don't
think, directly by God, at least not often.
So there is nothing wrong with you.
We walk by faith, not by sight or by sound.
OK, but enough of that. If this is about Israel's true
leader, then let's look at the second portrait, which is Jesus
as the true shepherd, the true shepherd who fights his enemies
and maybe ours. At least we would like it if
that were the case. Now if you are reading John's
Gospel early on, you'll see there's a lot of quite positive
things that starts off with the miracles in Cana that are
exciting. This through the the following
chapters, a number of miracles, some speeches of Jesus that we
might focus on and take encouragement from.
So if we're prone to dipping into the text and picking up the
highlights package, if you like, we will get from John's Gospel a
number of of interesting little bits and pieces.
But we might not notice then that in these chapters, Jesus is
continually fighting with people.
So in John chapter 5, he heals the lame man, but he immediately
comes into conflict with the Jewish leaders over the Sabbath.
Then in John six, he feeds the 5000 wonderful story, but he
immediately falls into fighting with the crowd.
Again, in John Chapter 7, his brothers goad him about going up
to Tabernacles, which we'll talk about it very briefly later, and
he gets into a fight with the Pharisees and the temple leaders
who send guards to try to arrest him.
Then in next page, then in chapter 8, he's fighting again
with the Pharisees and the Jews. And in Chapter 9 he heals the
man born blind and gets into the fight with the Pharisees again.
So there's a range of opponents that he's fighting with, from
the leadership at the very top to the people at the very
bottom, if you talk in that way. But Jesus is fighting with
pretty much everyone. Now, we have to be a little bit
careful when we think about the opponents of Jesus, right?
Because when we try to apply the Bible to our own time, what
we're effectively doing is making an analogy, right?
So this has happened in Jesus's day.
What is similar in our own day? And what lessons can we learn as
a result? Now, if we, if we think Jesus is
just fighting people who belong in the bad guy category, right,
good guys and bad guys, if Jesus is fighting the bad guys, then
if we're not careful, what we do is we go, well, who are the bad
guys in my day? And then I identify my enemies
or the people that I don't like. And I imagine that Jesus then
must be opposing them if he were here as well.
So Jesus becomes a team member of my opposition to my own
enemies. And so under apartheid, I hate
to bring that up, but under apartheid communism was evil.
And we might imagine as good Bible holding white people that
God hates the communists too. And that justifies all kinds of
things these days. We might think of members of
other religions as our enemies. We might think of people of
other sexualities as our enemies.
Who do you think don't answer, but who do you think is the bad
guy when you think of bad guys? But I think what we should
immediately start with is just to be careful not to assume that
Jesus fighting his enemies is going to translate to Jesus
fighting whoever fits into that category for you.
Because there are some really surprising groups.
John, chapter 6, looking at the opponents of Jesus here when he
feeds the 5000. Of course, there's this amazing
excitement about this miracle. Free food is always good.
But then what does he go immediately into saying?
And he doesn't get asked to say this stuff.
He just kicks off with this His followers must eat his flesh and
drink his blood, he says. People are of course, offended
by this, both because they don't understand what he means, but
also because they kind of do understand what he means.
They get offended. And it says at the end of this
little section from this time, many of his disciples turned
back and no longer followed him. So Jesus coming into his own
initiated conflict with his own people.
And then in John chapter 8, another interesting passage,
there's a disputed text, but a likely original text in which a
woman is caught in adultery and the people want him to treat her
as an enemy and he doesn't. He forgives her and and offers
her salvation, in fact, literally saves her life.
Then he gets into a fight with the Pharisees and it ends on a
positive note. It says even as he spoke, many
people believed in him. So you go, cool, That's, that's,
that's a fight that Jesus won. And look at the good fruit.
But the very next line to the Jews who had believed him, Jesus
said, if you hold my teaching, you are really my disciples,
then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
Then they get into a fight about what the truth is, and Jesus
says you belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry
out your father's desires to kill him, to kill Jesus.
He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the
truth, for there is no truth in him when he lies.
And by implication, when you speak, he speaks his native
language, for he is a liar and the father of lies to the Jews
who believed Jesus said you belong to your father, the
devil. So Jesus is choosing in many
cases to enter into conflict. He wants to start a
confrontation about certain things, and he's doing so even
with people who believe in him or people who are numbered among
his disciples. So what does that say about you
and me? Then?
We might assume, and you're in the right place.
You, I think many of you will call yourselves Christians, so
you'll number yourselves on Team Jesus.
But you might assume that being on Team Jesus means that that
Jesus will be on our sides. And I think John is saying that
he doesn't want you to take that for granted.
I've already upset part of my audience.
So John doesn't want us to take for granted that the rebukes in
his gospel are heading out somewhere else.
He wants us to make sure that we're listening as well.
Even the good guys get Jesus wrong, and Jesus needs to get in
their face about it. So who is the bad guy in our
text? Well, it's the favorites, the
Pharisees and and the chapter break here doesn't do us too
many favors that that's often the case.
Nothing too heinous happens here.
But you can see that this text as well as positive as it
sounds, you know, a Good Shepherd cuddling a sheep.
All of those lovely images as as positive as it sounds in many
places it's coming on the back of conflict yet again.
So Chapter 9, verse 40, the last verse of the previous chapter 40
and 41, it says this. Some Pharisees who were with him
heard him say this and asked, what are we blind to?
Jesus said if you were blind you would not be guilty of sin.
But now that you claim you can see, your guilt remains very
truly. I tell you, Pharisees, anyone
who does not enter the sheep and by the gates but climbs in some
other way is a thief and a robber.
So he's addressing this parable directly at the Pharisees
directly after calling them blind guides.
So now surely we have a legitimate bad guy.
We can say, well, we found our bad guys.
They're the blind guides, the bad leaders of Israel.
We know that they're legalists. We know that they're hypocrites.
We know that they're sinners and robbers according to to this
passage. But I think it wouldn't have
been obvious in Jesus's day that these should be treated as the
bad guys. So for one thing, Jesus himself
in the the Sermon on the Mounts, Matthew chapter 5, verse 20 says
this. For I tell you that unless your
righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers
of the law, you will certainly not enter the Kingdom of heaven.
Now, if they're bad guys, if they're fake believers, that
verse doesn't work. That verse assumes that this is
the high point of the social order in terms of the followers
of God at the time. So the Pharisees are the top of
the pile, they're the peak. They're the ones who are trying
to keep the law perfectly and we go, well, that's bad.
We can't be saving ourselves by keeping the law.
That's legalism. However, books like Nehemiah
chapters 9 and 10, if you want to go and read Nehemiah 9 and
10, the conclusion that they make when they've come back from
the exile is that we went into exile because we broke the law.
And that's very true. We, we kind of shattered the
covenant. We didn't follow what God told
us to do, So what we're going to do is follow God as perfectly as
we can and then perhaps God will renew his covenant with us.
That's the conclusion of the book of Nehemiah.
And that I think is what the Pharisees are trying to do.
They're trying to be the best law keepers, the best followers
of God's word. Does that ring any bells that
they can possibly be? They've got it wrong, of course,
but Jesus critique is going to be very shocking, I think to the
people of his day. So if we're trying to find an
analogy for the Pharisees to apply to ourselves, I think it's
the very Christian Christians who are here.
I think it's the elders. I think it's the the holiness
people, the heresy hunters. I'm not saying all of your
elders are Pharisees or all of the good Christians here are
Pharisees. But that's the analogy, right?
Those are the people that the finger is being pointed at.
Nicodemus wasn't a bad Pharisee, but the finger goes towards him
in this text as much as anyone else.
So we have to listen. Jesus is pointing at the good
ones among us and telling us to listen.
So that what's happening in this text is that Jesus is fighting
very, very hard to avoid being misunderstood in an unfruitful
way. You know, he saves the
adulterous, but he tells his own followers that they're the
children of their father, the devil.
So I think Jesus has some interesting ideas about who the
good guys are and who the bad guys are.
And that puts us in a situation of needing to listen very
carefully and not to make assumptions when we talk about
our true shepherd fighting our battles.
How sure are we that he would fight the same battles that we
think he should be fighting? So what are our takeaways from
this little section? What does the portrait of Jesus
as the true shepherd mean for us?
Well, I think obviously and a sigh of relief.
It's good to follow the Good Shepherd, but John is asking us
to listen to his voice and make sure that we follow.
Jesus doesn't accompany us on our mission or fight our battles
for us. He's asking us to follow.
And secondly, Jesus's opponents were people like us.
We're not off the hook for the hard words in a passage like
this one just because it's addressed at the Pharisees.
Jesus wants true followers of the real hymn, and that's what
he's fighting for. He's willing to take the fight
to people like you and me because he doesn't want us
following a Jesus of our own imagination.
He doesn't want us to be people who only claim to follow the
truth but aren't aware of what the truth is or aren't willing
to do what it takes. Jesus wants true followers of
the real hymn. So having a had a little look at
Ezekiel, we've we've thought about Jesus as the Messiah, the
one who leads Israel back from exile.
So what about the next portrait, which is that of the royal
shepherd, the shepherd as king. Now the Pharisees don't
understand the first parable, so Jesus changes up the metaphor
from shepherd to gates. And Eric will be pleased to hear
that I am in fact addressing the I AM statement that I was given.
So let me read. Let me read this little section
again. Therefore Jesus said again, very
truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.
All who have come before me are thieves and robbers, but the
sheep have not listened to them. I am the gate.
Whoever enters through me will be saved.
They will come in and go out and find pasture.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
I have come that they may have life and have it to the full.
OK, first thing to do is to ask what is a gate?
You know the answer, don't worry.
And what does it do right? But let's remind ourselves, a
gate is for security for the most part.
It prevents dangers from coming in and it prevents, you know,
sheep like creatures from wandering out into dangers out
there. The second thing a gate does is
that it acts as an access point, a passageway.
And so in the, in the, in the context of this story, it's
about entering safety or salvation.
And, and that's the way in, right?
You go into the enclosure for salvation's sake.
And it also gives you a way out so that you can be LED out by
day into pasture, into freedom. So that's what a gate does.
And, and Jesus, when he sums up, he says that as the gate, he is
unlike the thief who takes, he is a gateway into life and life
to the full. So that's what Jesus is
summarizing his identity as gates.
That's how he summarizes it. So again, as with the previous
portrait, this is good news for some people and bad news for
others. And we'll start with the bad
news. How can this be bad news for us?
Well, I think the fact that that Jesus is, if we take the royal
shepherd metaphor here, Jesus is kingship obviously comes into
conflict with the kings of our own kingdoms, right?
Our own little Christendoms, even church, it's horrible to
say, can become one's own little Kingdom.
Now, this might seem harsh because when you come to a
wonderful church like this, people are friendly and
welcoming, and when things are going wrong, they're helpful and
compassionate. Churches are usually loving and
generous but what happens when our kingdoms are challenged by
something even in church? Like when the church that I grew
up in not a common ground church, you won't know it and
affiliated. I was friends with the youth
leader who was also the pastor's son and he did music leading in
the church service as well. And a small story but he would
report how when he was singing. I think he had a good voice and
was a decent musician, but over keen and maybe a little bit
loud, he reported how often he saw people grimacing at him or
scowling or trying to discourage him.
By the looks that came back, maybe he's projecting, Who
knows? Maybe the music leaders here can
say whether they've had similar experiences.
I have no idea. But it just seems like people
from the pews can sometimes have their own preferences, at least
challenged and that doesn't go well.
But the same guy. So his father is the pastor,
right? When he he was a volunteer,
this, this youth pastor was a volunteer.
He wasn't employed and eventually things became too
much. He had a career, he had moved to
another neighborhood. So he decided that it was time
to go to a church outside of his father's shadow and and
somewhere in his neighborhood. And so he decided to leave.
And his parents did not take that well.
They cut him and his children off, never spoke to them again,
and still to this day are estranged.
Then I've got a friend from a previous denom who was part of
of a church. He was the second pastor and was
tasked with planting a church in a nearby neighborhood.
He went and did that. They had got the mandate from
the the elders that this is what they would do.
They had made promises to the people in that community.
But then the pastor, the head pastor retired and a new guy
came in and the new guy wanted to rather put the extra funding
into the children's ministry. And so he cancelled the church
plant. And this pastor said, well,
promises have been made. We can't do that.
So they got mediation in and these mediators were the heads
of the denomination and they were very good friends with the
new lead pastor. So what happened was, and I,
this sounds to me like it couldn't possibly happen in a
church, but This is why I bring it up.
What happened is they said said to him, you resigned from this
church and moved to the neighboring church on the other
side. This church leader is happy to
be your pastor and you can plant from out of his church.
All very good. So the friend resigns and then
everybody forgets they ever said that to him.
And so they said to him, why did you resign?
You now don't have a job. But what are we going to do?
Like, I mean, just don't let him resign.
But anyway, what are we going to do?
And they left him to then labor on his own.
They left. They shut him out from the
church, shut him out from the denomination, tried to get him
to resign his ordination, and he's now planting that church by
himself. So yeah, what happens when our
kingdoms are challenged? We all know what it what it
sounds like, or we know the the command to renounce our own
kingship. When we follow Jesus, we know
that we're supposed to become servants, but our own kingdoms
are very powerful competition for God's Kingdom.
So what we often do is just our own thing, and then we try to
find ways to justify it to God afterwards.
So that's the bad news of Jesus Kingdom.
What is the good news of Jesus Kingdom to us?
Well, let me again, as is my style, start somewhere weird.
What if you came across a person who was claiming to be a God?
Such people do exist. We've already had fake
apocalypses. What about someone who thought
they were God? Like, what would you think?
And what would you imagine their motivations would be?
What are they going to be doing next?
Well, I think we usually would imagine that person wants to be
put in a new category so that they can have power for
themselves and be held to different rules, right?
That's, that's generally what's going on there.
So the reason why Jesus's kingship is good news is because
Jesus is not at all like that. He's not about having power or
the right titles. He's got very other motivations
for claiming this kind of high position, this status of
Messiah, God's chosen king, perhaps even divine status for
himself. And he keeps comparing himself
to the false leaders who steal, kill and destroy.
And Jesus gives a description of his own kingship that sounds
like this. Well, he's known and recognized,
and people follow him because they want to.
Isn't it a lovely feature of the Gospels that the prostitutes and
tax collectors come to Jesus on their own?
They want to have a meal with him.
So he's known and recognized and followed willingly.
He keeps the flock safe. So as a gate, he, you know,
keeps them in and protects them at night, but he also then leads
them into freedom. I think that's an important
aspect of this text. He leads them into the posture
in the daytime when it's safe. They have freedom when it's
safe. And if you read Paul a lot, 1 of
the things that has only occurred to me kind of much
later in my walk, if you leave read Paul's letters, the thing
that he keeps fighting people about, not the only thing, but
one of the big things is freedom.
He keeps telling people stop making the Christian faith or
religion in general a constraint on people like in Galatians 5.
It says it is for freedom that Christ set us free, says Paul.
Stand firm then and do not let yourselves be burdened again by
a yoke of slavery. If people are trying to stop you
being free, don't listen to them.
So Jesus comes to give his sheep life to the full life and
eternity. Yeah, like eternal life is for
the future. But in John's Gospel especially,
it overflows now to others. It's about spreading life here
and now as well. And then finally, Jesus lays
down his own life for the sheep. So Jesus's big claims here are
not about making himself the greater, but about serving his
sheep. It's about doing things for his
people. And you know, it's easy for
people to say politicians on the election path, how much good
they're willing to do for their people.
And then it doesn't actually materialize.
But if you've read the rest of John's gospel, you will see that
Jesus actually lived it. Jesus is the servant shepherd,
which will be our next portrait in a second.
So what are the takeaways from this section?
Well, easy one. Renounce your own Kingdom.
We often think that Jesus is the honorary king of our lives as
long as he stays out of our business.
That is not a kingship. So for you, renounce your own
Kingdom. If you're one of the leaders of
this congregation or a congregation, it would be
wonderful. You've just, you know, got a new
pastor. It would have been wonderful if
that pastor were Jesus. You've got Eric, and that's good
as well. But Eric is one of Christ's
under shepherds. All of us who are leaders have
been delegated this, this authority, this responsibility
for guiding Christ's sheep. And that means leaders have an
extra responsibility, as James points out, for guiding people
in Christ's ways and for living according to Christ's example.
So if we, if I can remind you, Jesus protects, Jesus gives
freedom, Jesus gives pasture, Jesus gives life.
So to the church leaders here, to Eric for your new tenure.
Rather than using this position as something that that
underwrites your own platform and power, this should be a
platform for the care of people. Rather than being someone who
enriches yourself, you should use the resources of this
congregation to see people flourish.
Rather than using the pulpits to exercise control and authority,
let it be a vehicle for Christ's life, goodness, and freedom.
It's very easy for an organization to be molded into
the shape of the under shepherd rather than the true shepherd,
isn't it? Rather than being formed into by
Christ into disciples of the true royal king.
So I really hope that the common ground Weinberg grows and
prospers, that your numbers double and triple and all of
those good things. But I don't think that really
impresses Jesus all that much if that were to happen.
I think what does impress Jesus is when leaders learn from his
example and where the you, the sheep that are here flourish
under the care of the leadership that he's put over you.
So let it never be that what this text says of the bad
shepherds, that the people flee from them.
Let it never be said of your church leaders that the true
sheep need to flee from you. So looking some more at Jesus as
the gate, let's look at our 4th and final portrait very quickly.
The servant shepherd. So one more thing about a gate
is that a gate is an exclusive entry point.
This beautiful photo shows the the uselessness of having a gate
when there are other pathways available.
Now usually when we think of Jesus as the way, the truth and
the life, which is how we would connect these things, Jesus as
an exclusive gate, we think of him saying that he is the only
way to God, as that does in that text.
And I think that's of course valid.
Jesus being the way, the truth and the life.
No one comes to the Father but through him.
But it's a little bit strange in this text that he's been
speaking for so long about his service that he gives to the
sheep. It's so much counter to someone
trying to gain titles for themselves and gain power for
themselves that he should then switch over to say, well, you
then have to come by me. Only it's kind of against the
not very power hungry tone of the rest of the passage.
So. So what does it mean here that
Jesus is the gate? I don't think it's about Jesus
wanting to make himself the center of attention, for
example, in keeping with all the fighting he's been doing.
I think what this is trying to do here is to say that the kind
of kingship and the way to flourishing under this king
depends on understanding him in a very particular way.
You have to understand the real Jesus, he refuses, and that's
why he's fighting with people, to be forced into the wrong
pattern. So let's go back to that
Tabernacles story that I said I would bring up, which I think
explains it wonderfully well. But it's a kind of a weird 1.
And that's another reason why I like to talk about it, because
the weird stories always intrigue me.
So you've got in John Chapter 7, the account of Tabernacles where
Jesus is contending with his brothers.
Again, they say to him, if you're this great public figure,
why don't you go up to the feast and show yourself to the world.
And what does Jesus say? Well, he says, I'm not going up
to this feast because it's not yet my time.
All very well, that sounds good. Fighting with brothers is
normal. But then Jesus goes and you're
like, what? You said you weren't going to go
and now you're going. It's, it's also, I must say the
brothers didn't believe in him, which is why they're goading.
But it's, it's a very strange text says as time has not yet
come, but he goes now. There's two very important
details that you need to be able to understand what's going on
here, in my opinion anyway. And that is firstly, what kind
of feast Tabernacles is. Well, it's a harvest festival.
But leaving that aside, in the Torah the king every 7th year
would stand up at Tabernacles and read the read the law and
pronounce the blessing upon the people and the release from
slavery, right? So it's the King's job to stand
up and read Torah every 7th Tabernacles.
Now they haven't had a king, a real king anyway, for 500 years.
So when his brothers tell him to go up to Tabernacles and show
himself to the world, I think they're saying, well, if you're
toying with this idea of being their king, why don't you go do
what the king does and see what happens.
The other detail that you need to know is that when in John's
Gospel it says his time had not come, or when he talks about
being lifted up or exalted, what it's talking about is the cross.
Jesus. Time is the time of his death,
and he's very well aware that his mission will end in death.
So when Jesus says he's not going to Tabernacles in that way
really because his time hasn't come, what he means is
Tabernacles isn't the right feast at which to announce
himself as king. He's not that kind of king.
What feast does he announce his kingship at?
Well, it's Passover, isn't it? So what Jesus is saying by not
going up to tabernacles for this purpose is his kingship is not
as Israel's royal shepherd. He is not there as their
shepherd. He is there as their Passover
lamb. That's the kind of king he
insists on being understood as. So I am the gate does not mean I
am the only one that matters. Rather, it means that his death
is the only way to pull down sins barriers, to have that
pathway to God to pasture if you like.
But it also means for us that his pattern of self sacrifice,
his service to the point of laying down his life, that
pattern. Is the true pattern that gives
life as well so his death makes life possible and it gives us
the pattern for spreading life That's why we need to understand
Jesus as a Passover king and so to our conclusion think I've
done OK time wise so our conclusion a bad world and good
sheep. Now, I started out saying I'm
the kind of person who looks at the state of the world and goes,
you know, why can't God just unseat that leader, take that
person away, rapture, you know, the wrong kind of people so that
we can be left with the good ones to lead us instead.
Why does God tolerate it when evil leaders wave their hands
and thousands or 10s of thousands of lives are lost and
we're OK with that? But then when I think like that,
I go, well, is that really going to make any difference?
Where do such people come from? How do they have so much support
behind them? And when you think of that, then
you have to conclude, well, leaders are just former sheep,
are they not? And the character of the
sheepfold determines, determines the character of the sheep.
So as they say, we get the leaders we deserve.
Or to put it another way, if we were to cut the head off of this
particular beast, seven more heads just sprout in their
place. So God may choose once in a
while to to remove the corrupt shepherds or to to depose evil
leaders. But it's a little bit of a
pointless strategy unless there are true sheep who are listening
to the voice of the Good Shepherd.
Because someone has to be doing that hard daily work of shaping
the places, the sheepfolds, so that they reflect the life of
God. Because good leaders come from
good societies. Bad leadership is inhibited by
good societies. And when you look at what God is
trying to do in the world, while all of God's interventions
sending Christ being chief among them, all of God's interventions
are about building places like this that are pockets of God's
hope and love and goodness. And the more that we spread that
out, the more that the world takes on the shape of the Christ
who created it. So God has given us this pattern
in Christ to walk through that gate, to follow Christ in dying
to ourselves, so that we can live even now the pattern of
eternal life and start that domino effect of transforming
the one next to us, the neighborhood next to us.
So if we want to be a Society of truth tellers, we have to be
people who live the truth. If we want to be a Society of
life and health, we have to give life to others.
If you want to belong to a changed world, you have to be a
changed person. And that's where Jesus the gate
leads us. Our gracious shepherd, we thank
you for your grace to us, that you are one who leads us out
into pasture, who even in the the midst of our enemies, in the
valley of the shadow of death, that you bring life and that you
offer it to us freely. Help us not, Lord, to be the
kings and the shepherds of our own lives, but to follow behind
you into true places where life can can flourish and where we
can become agents then of your life to others.
And help us to lay aside our selfishness, to be people who
sacrifice in order to bring about the good that we want to
see in the world. So we thank you for the pattern
you've given. We thank you that you are the
King of Passover. We thank you that you have
forgiven our sins and given us the shape of life to bring life
to others. Help us to walk through that
gates this week and on into the future.
We ask in the name of Christ. Thank you for listening to
today's message. We hope you are encouraged and
challenged in your faith. If you're in the Southern
suburbs, would love to welcome you in person at one of
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Until next time, stay clear and keep shining your light.